


Recognition

by RoseisaRoseisaRose



Series: Everyday I'm Drabbling [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blue Lions Route spoilers, Drabble, extreme rarepair except it's not a ship, join me as I do not answer this question in any satisfying way, would these two be friends?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-19 04:10:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22604932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseisaRoseisaRose/pseuds/RoseisaRoseisaRose
Summary: Three times Lorenz doesn’t see Annette, and that’s it. There’s no fourth time.Written for the Felannie discord drabble challenge; this week's prompt was characters with no canon supports or interactions.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester & Annette Fantine Dominic
Series: Everyday I'm Drabbling [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649380
Comments: 21
Kudos: 26
Collections: Those Who Drabble in the Dark





	Recognition

Annette waves wildly to Lorenz when she first sees him at the monastery.

He’s barely changed since their time at the Royal School of Sorcery. He has the same confidence, the same flair for dramatic accessories, even the same unfortunate haircut, which Annette thought he’d have altered by now. Of course, she herself is also much the same – still clinging to Mercedes’ proverbial skirts, still feeling small and lost in a crowd. They barely overlapped while in Fhirdiad, but she’ll take any familiar face among these nobles, who all seem to know each other already.

“Hello, Lorenz!” she calls from the entrance of the Blue Lions classroom as he walks across the courtyard. Her frantic waving makes up for her tiny stature.

He walks by her and Mercedes without a second glance, as if he didn’t hear her at all. She sees him calling to Claude von Riegan, intent on a conversation with his House Leader.

“Goodbye, Lorenz,” she mutters to Mercedes, her wave significantly lessening in its enthusiasm. Mercie’s bright laughter makes up for any slights from a student she barely knew in the first place

-

Lorenz runs into Annette the day she leaves Garreg Mach. Literally – he’s scanning the supply wagons doing a mental count of what they can take back to Alliance territories, and he slams right into her.

“My apologies,” he says. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t see you there.”

“That’s okay, Lorenz,” she says. “It happens all the time.”

Lorenz feels he can’t just leave it at that. “I suppose this is –” he begins, then stops, and starts again. “I hope that you –”

He can’t think how to finish the sentence. Surely there’s something he can say. They were friends, weren’t they? And yet when he looks down at her, he can’t see her as a friend, or as an enemy. She’s a mystery; yet another person that he thought he knew better than he did.

“Annette, I –” he begins one final time, but her classmates are calling to her, waving from their own horses and supply wagons. She gives him a final smile, the sort of sad, forced smile you greet someone with when you know you’ll never see them again.

Months later he’ll remember her saying _It happens all the time_ , and he’ll wonder if she meant him specifically.

-

They meet again on the bridge of Myrddin. Strangely, in the ruins of the country he loves, Lorenz has achieved his greatest dream. He wears the finest armor of a noble, his livery distinguishing him as the captain of the guard as he leads the charge into battle. Annette has also picked through the wreckage of her broken home to find scraps of a dream: her beloved prince giving them a chance of victory; her father speaking in future tense rather than past; her fallen friend rising from the dead to return to them in this very battle. It’s not the dream she’d initially wanted, but it’s worth fighting for.

When Lorenz charges at Annette, his face a mask of authority and determination, there is no recognition in his eyes. He barely sees her. She sets her mouth in a grim line and pulls together a blast of light that is at once a greeting and a farewell.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

**Author's Note:**

> If it helps, I'm sure Byleth recruited Ferdinand and he's totally fine and not dead at all.


End file.
